Festival Program'04     

Competition Program

      The International Conference and round table «ART reality-show»     
 (moderator - Ivan Zassursky)

New realities ahead: on unpredictability

Although the reality show is considered to be a recent invention, this reflects the destiny of a notion more than that of a phenomenon. It can be said that the history of the new Russia has began from a political reality show, in which the country watched authorities and political institutes of the regime being ruined, watched the triumphs and tragedies of her new heroes. The force and intensity of this reality show born by the Gorbachev then live transmissions of the USSR People Deputies Congress were such that the whole country read newspapers, watched TV and listened to the radio, melting the concrete of Soviet Union as butter in the rays of people attention. However, while this was happening nobody realized that people were participating in a reality show, they were “inside the situation”. The main secret of its success lied in its unpredictable nature: nobody knew what was going to happen.

In TV format, the reality show has first appeared as “Through the glass”. The TV show owned its success mainly to explicit sex scenes, but its most shocking effect was the live transmission in which anything could happen. Again, everything became thwarted due to producers’ ego. Although unpredictability was the genius and the best structure principle of the reality show, the victory was ascribed to scriptwriters and directors. The farther the worse and the less understanding of the phenomenon.

When in the Russian Miss Universe contest 15-year old Alyona Pisklova suddenly shot ahead it came as a result of unpredictable specific actions of private parties in the common informational space. Conflicts, appearance of players realizing own strategies, their clash was real, though they existed in the “virtual” reality of Internet. Unpredictability, like in games Warholl played with “reality”: just record, draw attention and let happen what’s bound to happen.

It is interesting that the beauty contest has become a site of public outburst spontaneously. The show organizers have not asked permission from the contest participants. This was made possible by the open architecture of the Rambler media system. It is the openness of media platforms and open communication of people and interest groups that gives birth to new media dialogue of the audience. Reality is constructed spontaneously from the new media architecture, its highest achievement being open communication between people through symbolical actions. Thus, life becomes reality and, in Warholl’s words, grants everybody their 15 minutes of fame. Unpredictable.

The content of “media” consists of messages and documents, actions and private initiatives. We are absorbed into “reality”, an autoreference environment of interaction and communication, where each of us can count on being heard if there is something to say. New realities lie ahead.

PARTICIPANTS:
Nikita Alekseev, Russia – artist, art critic, head of the culture department at the Inostranets (The Foreigner) newspaper
Nina Zaretskaya, Russia – director of the Art Media Center "TV Gallery", Moscow
Grigory Libergal, Russia – Programming director, ANO “Internews”, Vice-President of Documentary Film and Television Guild, producer
Ivan Zassursky, Russia – director of the Media culture and communications laboratory of the journalistic faculty at Moscow State University. The Rambler Social Initiatives and Research Foundation president.
Alexei Isaev, Russia – artist, theorist, member of Filmmakers Union of RF, director of MediaArtLab, Moscow
Kirill Razlogov, Russia – director of the Russian Institute for Cultural Researches, art director of the Moscow International Film Festival, Moscow
Alexandre Dulerain, Russia – cinematographer, ТВ-компания «TНT»
Irina Kulik, film and video critic, newspaper “Kommersant” (Business man) newspaper
Dmitry Gutov, Russia – artist
Oleg Kireev, Russia – art critic and activist
Konstantin Oblaukhov, Russia – cinematographer, AliBuster studio, Saint Petersburg
Boris Yukhananov, Russia – cinematographer, one of the founders of “Parallel Cinema” movement
Andrei Silvestrov, Russia – cinematographer, STS TV-company
Aleksandr Shaburov, Russia – artist
Max Vasilenko, Russia –  TV director, cinematographer, works in documentary and feature film, music videos. Video designer, created “the look” of several TV channels
Our Own 2000 group, Russia – authors of the Russian “IndiVideo” source, media activists
Dmitry Ambartsumyan, Russia – author of the "Gonza" project (http://www.gonza.ru)
Yegor Nikolaev, Glupie Ludi group (Stupid People), Russia (http://www.glupieludi.ru/)

      Presentation Program     

REALITY SHOW AND CINEMA (composed by Milena Musina)

«Feeding the Baby» («Repas de bébé», France, 1895, 1' 33'')
Producers: Louis Lumiere, Auguste Lumiere

«10 Minutes Older» (USSR, 10'00'', 1978)
Producer: Gertz Frank

«Monkeys Island» (USSR, 1974, 41'00'')
Producer: Igor Voytenko

«Peeping Tom» (Great Britain, 1960, 101'00'')
Producer: Michael Powell
Actors: Karlheinz Böhm, Moira Shearer, Anna Massey

«The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse» («Die Tausend Augen des Dr. Mabuse», France-Italy-Germany, 1960, 105'00'')
Producer: Fritz Lang
Actors: Dawn Addams, Peter van Eyck, Gert Fröbe, Wolfgang Preiss

«The Secret Cinema» (USA, 1968, 30'00'')
Producer: Paul Bartel
Actors: Amy Vane, Philip Carlson, Gordon Felio, Barry Dennen

«Deathwatch» («La Mort En Direct», France-Germany, 1979; 120'00'')
Producer: Bertrand Tavernier
Actors: Romy Schneider, Harvey Keitel, Max von Sydow

      Multimedia and musical shows     

Nozh dlya Frau Muller (A Knife for frau Muller) (Saint-Petersburg, Russia)
Featuring: Oleg Gitarkin, Oleg Kostrov

The group has been founded in 1991 and has almost immediately become a model of musical extremism in Saint Petersburg. Their first recorded album, never released and virtually unknown, was "Happy End Dead" in punk rock style with psychobilli and hardcore elements. The second album "Little Joys" was created only two months from the first and was much similar stylistically. At the same time the group began touring actively. Having conquered the club audience in Germany in 1992 the group returns to acquire fame in their native city. It becomes a cult crew of the local club movement. In 1996 the group is reduced to it’s present number and records the absolutely digital cyberpunk “Killer Icicles” album. The media compares Nozh to Aphex Twin and Prodigy. From 1997’s “The Invisible Man” the group self-defines its style as post easy listening. 1999 “Hello, Superman” and 2000 “Dreams –the third rate” sustain their reputation.

NEOANGIN (Germany)

NEOANGIN is the famous Berlin artist and musician Jim Avignon. His group has already visited Moscow thrice, starting in February 2003. In the music world Jim’s colleagues are STEREO TOTAL, MOMUS and MOBY. NEOANGIN plays funny, cheerful, sometimes naïve, sincere and kind electronic music. It’s hard to define the style. Jim practices pop art both in painting and music: he plays reggae, polka and pseudo rock in turns, mixing it all up and murmuring songs about getting drunk in San Antonio being much better than getting drunk at home. One of his releases is titled "A Friendly Dog in an Unfriendly World". That’s probably how Jim sees himself – a friendly dog in an unfriendly world. Jim Avignon is the "craziest and fastest of German artists" as he once described himself. He alternates between drawing huge gouache paintings, designing Swatch watches, painting German universities’ walls and Boeing planes, and recently he has been commissioned by German government to paint a portrait of Gerhard Schroeder. As a musician Jim is also prolific, he has released five albums and tours incessantly all over Europe, where his group, NEOANGIN enjoys a constant celebrity.

The Robots (Moscow, Russia)

The group has been founded in 1997 in Moscow in reaction to the rapid development of new technologies and computers’ invasion into once human-only space of art. Its members are two architects and a physicist. The musicians practice soviet retrofuturistic aesthetics and have been initially connected with contemporary art. Their style is a mixture of electro pop, punk, new electro, Italo disco and other trends. Their concerts are usually accompanied by video shows created in real time on stage spontaneously.